Bristol Woman Pleads Guilty To '89 Slaying

VERNON — A woman charged with stabbing a Hebron man to death in his house hours after she met him in a Hartford bar pleaded guilty to manslaughter Thursday in Superior Court.

Tina M. Morrison, 27, of Bristol, pleaded guilty to the reduced charge in the December 1989 killing of Bruce Fairchild, a 38-year-old insurance worker.

Judge Samuel Sferrazza said he expects to order Morrison to serve eight years in prison when she is sentenced for killing Fairchild, whom she had met at Kenney's Restaurant hours earlier.

Morrison, a 5-foot-tall woman with waist-length blond hair, was arrested a day after Fairchild's body was found in his house on East Road. Fairchild had been stabbed once in the right side of the chest.

Police have said that Fairchild had been drinking with Morrison at Kenney's on Capitol Avenue, Dec. 13, 1989, and returned with him to his house.

In a statement to police, Morrison said Fairchild had put a knife to her throat and demanded she have sex with him. Fairchild put the knife down after Morrison told him "he could have anything he wanted," police said.

Morrison told police she then picked up the knife, but stopped short of confessing to the killing, police said.

A co-worker from Aetna Life & Casualty Co., where Fairchild had worked since 1972, found his body in the den of his home, lying face up next to a blood-covered piece of paper on which "Tina" and a Bristol telephone number had been written, police said.

Morrison had blood stains on her jacket and boots when she was arrested by state police in Bristol, police said. Witnesses at the bar told police she had been carrying a hunting-type knife in her boot the night she met Fairchild. The knife used to kill Fairchild has not been found, authorities said.

At the time of her arrest, Morrison was on supervised home release from prison after being convicted of possession of cocaine, officials have said.

Her guilty plea to manslaughter was part of a plea bargain between her lawyers, public defenders William Paetzold and Phillip